Let’s assume that it has been demonstrated that Group A has a lower average IQ than Group B, even accounting for cultural factors.
So what? What use is this information? You can’t transfer the assumptions from the general to the specific, so it tells you nothing about whether a specific member of Group A is more or less intelligent than you. You can’t make public policy decisions based on it. You can’t base educational practice on it. About all it’s good for is to make members of Group B feel marginally superior to members of Group A based on what is essentially a tribal affiliation basis (Go Group B! Rah!), and even then this will only really matter to those who are desperate enough to have their existences validated that they must cling to statistical trivia with no practical application.
I’m not looking to rehash the arguments of a few dozen other threads about whether such a difference actually exists. I just want to know what the point of it all is.
I’ve always thought this too. I mean, if you could show blacks have a slightly lower IQ than whites on average, it won’t change the fact that Barack Obama, Thomas Sowell, or Sylvester Gates are a hell of a lot smarter than I am.
The main advantage for me is that it would take away the “disparate impact” argument. For example, if very few Blacks score high enough to pass the test to become a firefighter, we are often told that it’s strong evidence of discrimination and that the fire department needs to spend a lot of public money hiring Black firefighters who would not have otherwise been accepted. Further, as a practical matter the fire department would have to relax its hiring standards either for all applicants or only Black applicants.
This strikes me as unfair as well as a public safety hazard.
But again, you’d have to apply the general results to the specific. Just because one group is less intelligent ON AVERAGE than another doesn’t tell you anything about individual applicants to the fire department and doesn’t discount the possibility that they are genuinely being discriminated against.
I mean, I agree that hiring should be done on a strict merit basis and assuming that not having a particular ethnic mix is automatically proof of discrimination is ridiculous, but it’s not a problem solved by knowing the average intelligence of various groups. In fact, you’re already encouraging active discrimination by assuming that a black applicant is too stupid to pass the test before they’ve even taken it.
Firefighters might need many skills in their line of work, but mighty brainage is not among them. In fact, one could say it’s adverse to the profession, on account of only a bloody idjit runs into a building while it’s on fire :).
The main goal of most race realists is to, both, “testify” and raise awareness of their bigoted views. Remember that most are very committed to preaching “the genetic, mental inferiority of the black race,” and since this goes against the accepted scientific/public understanding of humanity most racialists consider it a victory when people either 1) engage them 2) indulge their delusions.
If I bring up a debate in GD claiming that so-n-so’s “mother is a whore” it’s main purpose might not be to debate the accuracy of my claim, but simply to make the claim itself. IOW I’m simply calling your mother a “whore.”
Depends on how big the delta is between the median and how big the standard deviation is.
But in general, yes, we shouldn’t do anything differently as a matter of public policy, which should be geared to individuals and not groups. Note, however, that racial prejudice among the general populace of Group B against Group A is going to increase, since they have science behind them, in a manner of speaking. Most people don’t understand statistics.
Why not? I mean, if test performance is correlated with IQ, and one knows the IQ distributions of Blacks and other groups, one could do a statistical analysis and predict roughly what percentage of the passing candidates will be Black. If the actual passing percentage is at that level, then there’s no evidence of discrimination.
Are you going to break that down further to account for mixed heritage or are you basing this all on the one drop rule? Don’t you think that will impact your predictions? There is no practical value to the model or the predictions you propose.
Finding a difference like that will lead to some people claiming the other group isn’t really human, doesn’t deserve all human rights like the right to vote.
To me this is an important distinction to make when judging whether a certain action or opinion is “racist”. Take for example the propensity to commit violent crime. If I know nothing else about a person than his race (for instance if he’s a stranger approaching me on a deserted subway platform), it is a fact that if the person is black, he is many times more likely to commit a violent crime than if he is Asian. Knowing this fact, and acting accordingly, is not racist. But if the guy happens to be black, and as he approaches I notice he’s carrying a medical textbook and wearing surgical scrubs, it changes the calculation tremendously. Likewise if he’s Asian and I notice tattoos all up and down his arms, the facts have changed. The racist is the person who is still more wary of the black guy, even knowing this added information.
Public policy tends to force people to treat others as members of groups and not individuals, with the predictable consequence of disparate treatment that is often completely defensible. The answer is to restrain public policy and let people treat people as individuals, not to pretend every group is equal in every way.
I would guess that further breakdown is not necessary.
Perhaps. My instinct is that it wouldn’t make a big enough difference to worry about.
I disagree and I think a hypothetical example will demonstrate it:
Let’s suppose that there are a thousand applicants for some job or school position - 150 black and 850 white. 135 of the White applicants pass the test but only 5 of the blacks pass. Thus, even though Blacks made up 15% of the applicants they only made up 3 1/2 percent of the group which passed the test.
As a society, should we infer race discrimination based on these facts?
Sure, but just because one group is more likely to be discriminated against ON AVERAGE than another group doesn’t tell you anything about individual applicants, including whether or not they were discriminated against.
I would agree with the notion that policy should be based on individuals, not groups. If an individual applicant to the fire department can show he or she has been discriminated against, then he has cause for legal action. If applicants from group X are less successful than other groups, that does not show discrimination against any individual.
Exactly. The pseudoscience is just a smokescreen for the attack.
“Why? Because Science says so,” is the new version of “Why? Because the Bible says so.” Never mind that neither the Bible nor science say anything of the kind. The point is to tie racialism to the powerful source of authority available in society at the time.
Then as now, maintaining racial divisions serves the interests of capitalist oligarchy.
Yes, theorically, it shouldn’t matter that much on an individual basis, given that the “average” doesn’t mean anything about a specific individual, etc…
However, given what people are, I think the results of such an information would be totally disastrous. If I were master of the world and heard about such a thing being proven, I’d likely order a total blackout and forbid the public release of the data.
Test scores aside (and for most jobs, there is no test), how would one stop a company that doesn’t hire people from group X at all? Historically, it is certain that many people have been discriminated against for no other reason than being a member of an identifiable group. There is no way they can prove individual discrimination, and in fact they are not being discriminated against as individuals.